Arlington County Prepares to Rename Lee Highway After Virginia’s First Black Congressman John Langston

The Arlington County Board is expected to vote in July on a motion to rename U.S. Route 29 from Lee Highway to Langston Boulevard. On Saturday, the board voted to defer the vote to allow more time for community comment and to refine cost estimates, according to a county press release. The release said the supervisors expressed “broad support for the motion.”

A presentation from the County Manager’s Office recommended the change, authorized by HB 1854, passed in the 2021 General Assembly. The presentation says the current name doesn’t represent Arlington’s values, and proposes memorializing John Langston in the road’s name.

Congressman John Langston

“John M. Langston was an American abolitionist, attorney, educator, activist, diplomat, and politician who was the first Black person elected to Congress from Virginia,” the presentation states.

In the wake of the Civil War and the Fifteenth Amendment, which prohibits people from being denied the right to vote based on race, Black Republicans were elected to Congress from Southern states formerly represented by slave owners.

Essay “The Fifteenth Amendment in Flesh and Blood: The Symbolic Generation of Black Americans in Congress, 1870–1887” states, “They, too, were largely symbols of the Union’s victory in the Civil War and of the triumph of Radical Republican idealism in Congress.”

Still, by 1887 Congress again convened an all-White session.

“Enforced by legal and extralegal means, the laws and practices that constituted the Jim Crow system evolved over several decades and ultimately restricted civil and political rights, economic opportunities, and social mobility for African Americans until the 1960s,” essay “The Negroes’ Temporary Farewell” states. “Virtually all the political advances afforded freedmen during Reconstruction were rolled back and eradicated during the years after 1890. In the South, the races were separated even more systematically and rigidly than during slavery.”

Langston was elected at the beginning of that period, after a campaign battle against White Republican Confederate General William Mahone. Langston served in the 51st Congress from 1889 to 1891, according to the U.S. House of Representatives History, Art, and Archives site. Langston lost his campaign for reelection to Democrat James Epes amid a national wave of Democrats retaking the U.S. House with a 100-member majority.

“Langston believed the election was tainted by fraud—as evidenced by long lines for black Republicans at the polls, missing ballots in black strongholds, and undue pressure by Mahone supporters,” Langston’s U.S. House bio states.

According to U.S. House data, only two Black congressmen have represented Virginia since Langston. Both are currently in office: Congressman Bobby Scott (D-Virginia-03), who has served since 1993, and Congressman Donald McEachin (D-Virginia-04), who has served since 2017. Virginia has never had a Black senator.

Lee Highway Renaming Discussion

In July 2020, the board asked the Lee Highway Alliance (LHA) to begin selecting a new name; Langston was among the recommendations.

The County Manager Office’s presentation cites LHA Working Group Member Saundra Green: “The name Langston has had an incredible impact on the lives of so many African American children who grew up along [and nearby] the Lee Highway corridor…The name tells the story of the dark [racial] history of Arlington County as well as the County’s brightest time –when the four students who went to Langston Elementary were the first four students to integrate the Commonwealth of Virginia. The name tells the whole story of how Arlington has evolved and grown over the years.”

Two current and former members of the LHA spoke to the board in the public comment. The last speaker, independent candidate for County Board Audrey Clement, said, “I’m not here either to support or oppose renaming Lee Highway, or deferring the question till next month. Rather, I’m concerned about the use of symbolism to distract people of color from the real issues confronting them, namely lack of employment and educational opportunity and social and environmental injustice.”

Vice Chair Katie Cristol said, “I’m really excited that we’re at this moment and it’s really just such a credit to the [LHA] and to this working group that saw a strong desire for a change of name and did it and went forth and engaged in some really extensive stakeholder engagement. There are a lot of kind of downstream impacts of changing the name, potentially on the business community right, on residents and others, so even if it’s something that we want to do, there’s just a lot of logistical conversations to have.”

Board Member Libby Garvey said, “I heard Audrey Clement’s comments, and we hear this sometimes from people, kind of that age-old question ‘What’s in a name,’ right? And it’s when for me I started realizing all of these names came in in 1920s — they were done with a purpose. And if back in the twenties they made a purpose out of doing this, well we’ve got a purpose to take them away. And it means that it really is something important. And it just continues our understanding of how we got to where we are today and what we need to do to move forward.”

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Eric Burk is a reporter at The Virginia Star and the Star News Network.  Email tips to [email protected].
Background Photo “Lee Highway” by Famartin. CC BY-SA 4.0.